When it rains it pours

There is an old Irish saying- "Boxty on the griddle, boxty in the pan, if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man." Let's just say, it is a good thing I already have a man...and that he is not Irish! Persian food I can do, a boxty genious I am not. After about half an hour of grating potatoes and draining potatoes and mixing them with all the other ingredients, I just couldn't get these griddle cakes to turn out right. I will not be defeated however, I will keep trying now and again to make these potato like pancakes because the batter smelled WONDERFUL. I might have tried harder to get it right, but the day was a long one (and the night proceding) and I was exhausted. My youngest baby (by exactly 1 minute!) Miles had been up coughing all night. I took him to the doctor and he was diagnosed with croup and had to get a cortizone shot. The shot made him feel much better which made his mother overjoyous, but I still was very tired and almost didn't even want to cook at all! Luckily Miles and Maddie took a nap at the same time, so I only had Noah to contend with while I cooked our Irish feast. If you read the proceeding blog entries, you know that last week my aunt was in the hospital and the week before that I was in the hospital. I am hoping that this will be the last week that someone is sick, although I realize that with three children under 3 there will always be challenges I must overcome in order to keep going with this project...

Back to the cooking. I must say that Irish cooking was only 50% successful. Two dishes turned out exactly right and two were terrible. The other I messed up with an Irish potato bread and really all I think that went wrong was that it didn't get cooked all the way through. Perhaps I didn't flatten it out enough? Who knows, but I do know I didn't enjoy the taste. I plan to redeem myself by attempting Irish Soda Bread today, which is really what I should have done in the first place!

On to the successes! For the main course, I made traditional Irish stew It is a very basic recipe, only containing carrots, onions, potatoes, beef, water, salt and pepper. I liked that it
was a pretty healthy dish, although next time I would experiment with putting more in it to add more flavor. The crowning glory of Irish week was definetly the dessert, apple dumpling. I have never made a dish like that on the stove, so I was a little weary, but it turned out fantastic! It is basically apples, cinnamon, sugar and water, with a cake like topping that you simmer on the stove. It was simple and delicious, served with vanilla ice cream. Apple dumpling will definetly be going in my permanent recipe book!

I am still not sure what region or country I will be tackling next week, since it's Valentine's day. I thought about French, but I don't know if I have enough time or money to put into it next week. Any suggestions?